Please come out and vote on the NYC Council participatory budget. Participatory budgeting is a grassroots process through which district residents vote directly to allocate funding toward proposals developed by the community to meet local needs. Young people from age 16 and up can vote, as can immigrants, both documented and undocumented. To find voting locations and dates throughout the Bronx, go HERE.

It has come to our attention that the attempt to have your names removed from the Illinois ballot as presidential candidates in the November, 2012 general election is not an isolated incident but part and parcel of an ongoing pattern of abuse extending over many years, which is highly suggestive of a corrupt and unlawful combination or conspiracy to abrogate the voting rights of the people of the state of Illinois.

Consequently, I urge you, either individually or preferably jointly, to take the following actions not only in defense of your own rights as candidates and as citizens, but in defense of the voting rights of the people of Illinois, and of all Americans.

(1) Please take legal action to have the challenge against your petitions, which is currently pending before the Illinois State Board of Elections (ISBE), removed to the United States District Court for the Central District of Illinois on the grounds of evidence that the petition challenges at Bar form part of a pattern of abuse that is indicative of an unlawful combination in furtherance of the suppression of the votes of third-party voters in the state of Illinois in violation of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and of the 15th Article of Amendment to the United States Constitution;

(2) Please consider filing a formal complaint with the U.S. Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division, requesting an investigation of allegations that Messrs. Rob Sherman, Chairperson of the Cook County, Illinois, Green Party; Andrew Finko [1], Mr. Sherman’s attorney; and John Fogarty, chief counsel to the Illinois Republican Party; and the Illinois State Board of Elections have engaged in an ongoing pattern of corrupt combination and abuse in furtherance of a scheme to suppress the votes of third-party voters in the state of Illinois in violation of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and of the 15th Article of Amendment to the United States Constitution;

We have reason to believe that you would be able to obtain pro bono legal representation should you decide to pursue either or both of the foregoing suggested courses of action.

==John H. Reynolds

Secretary, Bronx County Green Party

End Notes

[1] Concerning Andrew Finko, Esq.: We are in possession of documentary evidence that Mr. Finko actively participated in a media circus which was orchestrated around the confirmation of Rahm Emmanuel as mayor of Chicago. The public has a right to know whether Andrew Finko was at that time working for Rahm Emmanuel or in collusion with John Fogarty, and whether the relationship, in either case, is ongoing. Furthermore, Andrew Finko should be placed under oath, and required to DISCLOSE his secret client list.

“We are all enthusiastic supporters of the Occupy movement,” said John Reynolds, Chairperson of Green Team (2012) New York, “and many of us have been participants in OWS since the beginning.”

According to Reynolds, the Bronx is itself “occupied territory”; and the Demopublican and Republicrat machine–as he calls the two major parties–is the political arm of the hostile occupation.

“That’s why Greens are running on our independent Green party line–to liberate the people of the Bronx from one-party political machine mis-rule,” Carl Lundgren, Chair of the Bronx County Green party, further explained.

This year, Green party candidates in the state’s poorest county are challenging incumbents in two NY State Senate districts, and in three state assembly districts.

In the 34th Senate district in the North Bronx, county party chair Lundgren is facing off…

“We are all enthusiastic supporters of the Occupy movement,” said John Reynolds, Chairperson of Green Team (2012) New York, “and many of us have been participants in OWS since the beginning.”

According to Reynolds, the Bronx is itself “occupied territory”; and the Demopublican and Republicrat machine–as he calls the two major parties–is the political arm of the hostile occupation.

“That’s why Greens are running on our independent Green party line–to liberate the people of the Bronx from one-party political machine mis-rule,” Carl Lundgren, Chair of the Bronx County Green party, further explained.

This year, Green party candidates in the state’s poorest county are challenging incumbents in two NY State Senate districts, and in three state assembly districts.

In the 34th Senate district in the North Bronx, county party chair Lundgren is facing off against incumbent Jeff Klein who captured no less than four lines on the ballot–Democratic, Republican, Independent, and Working Families parties. “It makes it sort of difficult for people to figure out what my opponent stands for,” said Lundgren. Klein (there is also another candidate running on the Conservative line) has been criticized for taking anti-tenant positions, and for pay-for-play practices.

Manhattan Green party chairperson, Tom Siracuse, is running in the 29th Senate District against Democrat Jose M. Serrano in a district that spans parts of Manhattan and most of the South Bronx.

In the 87th AD, Walter Nestler, who has organized tours of toxic sites in the Bronx, is running on the Green party line against Democrat Luis Sepulveda, the anointed heir of the Bronx machine to succeed Peter Rivera who resigned under a cloud after his former law partner and campaign treasurer was sentenced to six months in prison after pleading guilty last June to federal mail fraud involving a non-profit.

Finally, veteran Bronx radical activist, Dan Zuger, has claimed the Green party line in his bid to unseat Democratic machine hack, Marcos Crespo, the incumbent in the 85th AD in the East Bronx.

During every refueling outage since 1993 at Indian Point Unit 2 (New York), radioactively contaminated water has been leaking into containment at rates between two and ten gallons per minute. The water is leaking through the metal liner for the refueling cavity, an area that is emptied of water during reactor operation and filled with water during refueling to allow underwater transfer of irradiated fuel assemblies. The liner, according to the plant’s safety studies, is supposed to be leakproof as part of the protection package in event of earthquakes. The plant’s owner has tried a few times to patch the leaking liner, but those efforts to restore the facility to within its safety analysis framework have failed. The NRC is well aware of the problem and the repeated failures to correct it. But the agency is complacent about all of it, similar to the person who writes off a flat tire as only being flat on the bottom. The NRC is on record as accepting the recurring violations of the plant’s safety bases because it only leaks during refueling.

The situation now at Indian Point Unit 2 is eerily similar to the situation at Davis-Besse. That plant’s owner and the NRC were aware of recurring leakage in its containment. The plant’s owner and the NRC accepted the unacceptable at Davis-Besse. The US Congress asked the NRC how they could have overlooked such obvious warnings signs at Davis-Besse that put the people of northern Ohio at undue risk. Congress probably did not mean for the NRC to take this as an invitation to replicate that same complacent regulatory neglect at Indian Point Unit 2.